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benjobaggins's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
lexie_lex's review against another edition
1.0
sí, sí, sí, muy contemporáneo y lo que quieras, es la madre más aburrida que he leído este año. Y eso que empezó super bien, pero ya me harté, alv.
tristansreadingmania's review against another edition
3.0
Ah, Metafiction, my dear friend. What a puzzlement you are. Indeed, what a veritable source of frustration you sometimes prove to be. Ever desperately struggling to find that delicate balance, to walk that oh so treacherous tightrope. After all, isn't it true that in your case, conceptual ingenuity is one thing, but simultaneously eliciting emotional investment from a reader is another?
Well, I hate to do this, I really do. Unfortunately, one of your practitioners, Italo Calvino, with his proclaimed masterpiece If on a Winter's Night a Traveller didn't quite manage to achieve the latter with this one, your humble reader. Let me explain.
This is a stupendous book. It truly is. Calvino represented your particular flavour well. You should be proud. The plot is intricately crafted, well-structured, daring. It has great prose, wonderful insights about the nature of reading, of writing, how both lifestyles intrude on life, shape it. All things any dedicated lover of literature should theoretically go for. Yes, in its time this novel was - I suppose - quite revolutionary and hip. It might still be, since it seems to steadfastly remain a favourite among the in-crowd.
Yet, why does it feel so cold, so distant, so - you're going to hate me for this - exceedingly artificial? Where is the vibrancy, the rawness? Where are the well-fleshed out characters one can invest in, the arcs? Why did visions of Calvino engaging in mental masturbation keep popping up in my mind while reading this? It's all just so dreadfully unengaging. Shouldn't this have been better served as a collection of short stories, with a metafictional framing device to connect them all?
Please don't think this slightly disappointed reader is lambasting the entire movement, I am not. I want to believe. I really, really do.
Well, I hate to do this, I really do. Unfortunately, one of your practitioners, Italo Calvino, with his proclaimed masterpiece If on a Winter's Night a Traveller didn't quite manage to achieve the latter with this one, your humble reader. Let me explain.
This is a stupendous book. It truly is. Calvino represented your particular flavour well. You should be proud. The plot is intricately crafted, well-structured, daring. It has great prose, wonderful insights about the nature of reading, of writing, how both lifestyles intrude on life, shape it. All things any dedicated lover of literature should theoretically go for. Yes, in its time this novel was - I suppose - quite revolutionary and hip. It might still be, since it seems to steadfastly remain a favourite among the in-crowd.
Yet, why does it feel so cold, so distant, so - you're going to hate me for this - exceedingly artificial? Where is the vibrancy, the rawness? Where are the well-fleshed out characters one can invest in, the arcs? Why did visions of Calvino engaging in mental masturbation keep popping up in my mind while reading this? It's all just so dreadfully unengaging. Shouldn't this have been better served as a collection of short stories, with a metafictional framing device to connect them all?
Please don't think this slightly disappointed reader is lambasting the entire movement, I am not. I want to believe. I really, really do.
dyno8426's review against another edition
5.0
When David Mitchell (the author of Cloud Atlas) says that this book is "breathtakingly inventive", one better believe so; and so I did. Appropriately fulfilling this for me, it has joined those books whose creative force with story-telling is outstanding and imaginative journey so vast that its impression is indelible. This also being a book about books, having self-referential nature wittily swept into the story with ease and not in a trying-too-hard manner, and on top of it, having a collection of ten incomplete stories-within-this-story is more than what all expectations one book could promise.
At the heart of the story is the relationship between Reader and Writer - the you/me and the author telling this story. How both writing and reading is an individual activity which essentially happens alone and consequently, has no definition or meaning without the notion of self or having independence from personal factors. There is a dichotomy of truth and falsity in fiction. While a Writer tries to give us a fragment of truth, which the limitation of expression and language, effectively negates it. On top of it, Reader's expectations, personal preferences and subjective interpretation further distance the Writer's intentions from the eventual meaning which us Readers derive from books. The question which the author puts is whether the relationship between Writer and Reader, having lost its effect of supposedly "heart-to-heart" conversation of truthful ideas and experiences, has lost its meaningful essence in this obscurity? The act of putting the very first mark on paper starts diverging from the mind of Writer. While finding its way through editing and translations, even incomplete renditions and physical distortions, does the final sensation or intellectual evocation inspired by a book, particularly fictions, have a purity of form left within itself, hard like the other objective truths of the world, to stand upon?
The author uses ten different stories that come in the Reader's way in his literary pursuit for continuity and his desperation for closure, each stopping as abruptly as they all begin. Through the use of almost magical-realism elements in the form of apocryphal literature existing exactly to challenge the notion of authenticity and originality in the world of fictional literature (and the world of human ideas in general), the author makes you imagine a rebellious organisation exactly to symbolise these grey boundaries that exist in the realm of ideas and creativity, where ownership and purity is an illusion. While it sounds far-fetched as an idea, this book strengthen's its point by bringing the perspective of you, the Reader and Other Readers. How reading can exist just for itself - justifying the escape from truth that it is supposed to provide. Putting imaginary boundaries defeats the purpose of books meant for human mind which is eager to receive them. While the limitation of fiction described above make it sound absurd, the limitlessness of the types of experience that can emerge from every individual's superimposition of their own experiences, and personal meaning that they can derive from fiction, is liberating and empowering. Meanwhile this book also offers the Writer's perspective. It is every human's personal truth that ever inspires anyone to share it through writing. How this quest for creativity in this expression is undoubtedly challenging, but also, as natural as reading is supposed to be.
Calvino achieves all this realisation cleverly by keeping you, the Reader, as the active participant in this tour-de-force. The "I" of the Reader is central, like the theme of the novel, throughout the narrative - the author talks to you and makes you experience the experience of reading his book as he envisions it. In every story-withing-the-story, the Reader goes recursively to every level and further sees the imagination of several imaginary authors through a first-hand experience of various genres and sensations. The incompleteness of several stories make you question your own expectations that are left unfulfilled to you and evaluate the extent of derivations that stories in general could ever provide you. Despite the awareness of everything being a figment of Calvino's imagination in a self-referential manner, it describes its own origins somewhere in the book, making this a lovely mess of how stories move you in their choreography. This is a recommended circus of imagination to witness and a reinforcement of the love for fictions.
At the heart of the story is the relationship between Reader and Writer - the you/me and the author telling this story. How both writing and reading is an individual activity which essentially happens alone and consequently, has no definition or meaning without the notion of self or having independence from personal factors. There is a dichotomy of truth and falsity in fiction. While a Writer tries to give us a fragment of truth, which the limitation of expression and language, effectively negates it. On top of it, Reader's expectations, personal preferences and subjective interpretation further distance the Writer's intentions from the eventual meaning which us Readers derive from books. The question which the author puts is whether the relationship between Writer and Reader, having lost its effect of supposedly "heart-to-heart" conversation of truthful ideas and experiences, has lost its meaningful essence in this obscurity? The act of putting the very first mark on paper starts diverging from the mind of Writer. While finding its way through editing and translations, even incomplete renditions and physical distortions, does the final sensation or intellectual evocation inspired by a book, particularly fictions, have a purity of form left within itself, hard like the other objective truths of the world, to stand upon?
The author uses ten different stories that come in the Reader's way in his literary pursuit for continuity and his desperation for closure, each stopping as abruptly as they all begin. Through the use of almost magical-realism elements in the form of apocryphal literature existing exactly to challenge the notion of authenticity and originality in the world of fictional literature (and the world of human ideas in general), the author makes you imagine a rebellious organisation exactly to symbolise these grey boundaries that exist in the realm of ideas and creativity, where ownership and purity is an illusion. While it sounds far-fetched as an idea, this book strengthen's its point by bringing the perspective of you, the Reader and Other Readers. How reading can exist just for itself - justifying the escape from truth that it is supposed to provide. Putting imaginary boundaries defeats the purpose of books meant for human mind which is eager to receive them. While the limitation of fiction described above make it sound absurd, the limitlessness of the types of experience that can emerge from every individual's superimposition of their own experiences, and personal meaning that they can derive from fiction, is liberating and empowering. Meanwhile this book also offers the Writer's perspective. It is every human's personal truth that ever inspires anyone to share it through writing. How this quest for creativity in this expression is undoubtedly challenging, but also, as natural as reading is supposed to be.
Calvino achieves all this realisation cleverly by keeping you, the Reader, as the active participant in this tour-de-force. The "I" of the Reader is central, like the theme of the novel, throughout the narrative - the author talks to you and makes you experience the experience of reading his book as he envisions it. In every story-withing-the-story, the Reader goes recursively to every level and further sees the imagination of several imaginary authors through a first-hand experience of various genres and sensations. The incompleteness of several stories make you question your own expectations that are left unfulfilled to you and evaluate the extent of derivations that stories in general could ever provide you. Despite the awareness of everything being a figment of Calvino's imagination in a self-referential manner, it describes its own origins somewhere in the book, making this a lovely mess of how stories move you in their choreography. This is a recommended circus of imagination to witness and a reinforcement of the love for fictions.
stinky_lo's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
unluckycat13's review against another edition
The narrative conceit and writing style are both fun, but the characters aren't interesting and the story itself is very by the numbers and I don't like it.
oaysis134's review against another edition
challenging
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.75
incunabula_and_intercourse's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
I'm kind of struggling with this one.
See, If on a winter's night a traveler is the kind of book that should become an instant favorite. Metafictional weirdness, lush prose, absurdism out the wazoo... I loved that! I loved that a lot! I also really likedthe twist with the book titles; I had a hunch that they'd come together to form a cohesive sentence, and I was satisfied at the end when they did just that. Like, objectively, from a craft perspective, this is a masterpiece, and one I heartily recommend.
That being said. From a critical/feminist lens, this book struggles to pass the sniff test. Male characters get to be characters; female characters are always Girls, Young Women, Mistresses. You, the Reader, go to a university, and while you're there, you note the crowds of "young men and girls." And pretty much every woman is either a matron or an object of lust. I thought Lotaria was going in a slightly different, if not mean-spirited "lol these college leftists amirite" direction, but thenyou have sex with her, too . So.
(There's also something to note about how the most lurid and graphic depictions of sex and sexuality happen in stories with non-Western casts, but that's not fully my call to make. It's just a thing that makes me raise my eyebrow somewhat.)
And I get that it's all about, like... Life's all the same story, man, boy meets girl, it's so deep, and yet. The fact that the Reader gets to be an ambiguous (if not straight and male) figure, while the Other Reader has to be Ludmilla, object of desire and pinball passed between different men who want her for different reasons... The fact that when you're addressed as Ludmilla, it's not in the context of you doing things, it's in the context of the Reader analyzing your house while you're not there, or else being the target of his desire... And no, a little wink and a nod to the fact that you're doing the thing doesn't absolve you from the fact that you still did the thing. A trope with a lampshade on is still a trope, and ironic misogyny is still misogyny. It did dampen my enthusiasm somewhat.
So, why the high rating? Well, I'm more lenient on old books and classics, and for all its misogyny, Traveler is still a great book. Like, were I less concerned with feminism, it would have unquestionably been a 5-star favorite read. Think of 4.5 as a consolation prize. But to people giving it lower scores for feminist reasons, I cannot fault you in the slightest, because oh my God, same.
And now I'm realizing that all 3 metafiction books I've read were by white men. This is the genre for me, but I need more female authors, stat.
See, If on a winter's night a traveler is the kind of book that should become an instant favorite. Metafictional weirdness, lush prose, absurdism out the wazoo... I loved that! I loved that a lot! I also really liked
That being said. From a critical/feminist lens, this book struggles to pass the sniff test. Male characters get to be characters; female characters are always Girls, Young Women, Mistresses. You, the Reader, go to a university, and while you're there, you note the crowds of "young men and girls." And pretty much every woman is either a matron or an object of lust. I thought Lotaria was going in a slightly different, if not mean-spirited "lol these college leftists amirite" direction, but then
(There's also something to note about how the most lurid and graphic depictions of sex and sexuality happen in stories with non-Western casts, but that's not fully my call to make. It's just a thing that makes me raise my eyebrow somewhat.)
And I get that it's all about, like... Life's all the same story, man, boy meets girl, it's so deep, and yet. The fact that the Reader gets to be an ambiguous (if not straight and male) figure, while the Other Reader has to be Ludmilla, object of desire and pinball passed between different men who want her for different reasons... The fact that when you're addressed as Ludmilla, it's not in the context of you doing things, it's in the context of the Reader analyzing your house while you're not there, or else being the target of his desire... And no, a little wink and a nod to the fact that you're doing the thing doesn't absolve you from the fact that you still did the thing. A trope with a lampshade on is still a trope, and ironic misogyny is still misogyny. It did dampen my enthusiasm somewhat.
So, why the high rating? Well, I'm more lenient on old books and classics, and for all its misogyny, Traveler is still a great book. Like, were I less concerned with feminism, it would have unquestionably been a 5-star favorite read. Think of 4.5 as a consolation prize. But to people giving it lower scores for feminist reasons, I cannot fault you in the slightest, because oh my God, same.
And now I'm realizing that all 3 metafiction books I've read were by white men. This is the genre for me, but I need more female authors, stat.
egyptiaca's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0